


Statement about doors: Audio recording by the Archivist in situ

by CertifiedPissWizard



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Original Statement, Post MAG160, anyways spiral rights, canon nonbinary character at least technically, i mean Michael isn’t referred to w gendered pronouns, in this house we simp for an eldrotch entity/j, pretty sure the spiral are Michael’s gender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-08
Updated: 2020-08-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 03:26:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25786579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CertifiedPissWizard/pseuds/CertifiedPissWizard
Summary: The Archivist:There is a door. It is not a wooden door or an automatic door or anything like that. It is a revolving door- large and glass. It is empty, and is surrounded by walls. The only way through is the door. It is still.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Statement about doors: Audio recording by the Archivist in situ

The Archivist:   
There is a door. It is not a wooden door or an automatic door or anything like that. It is a revolving door- large and glass. It is empty, and is surrounded by walls. The only way through is the door. It is still. 

Michelle Thomson *needs* to get to the other side. She doesn’t know why. She just. Does. 

The walk to the door is normal. The ground is level and the walls are brick. The revolving door is made of glass. She *has* to go through the door, must see what’s on the other side. Curiosity has always been her biggest curse. The compulsion to know- obsession. 

The door pushes easily as she steps in. She pushes, and there is no other side to the door. Someone else steps in, but there is no opening. They say something to her. She does not understand what they say. She tries to ask what they said, but her voice is garbled. Another person steps in. 

Doors are transitional states. They are a space between one place and another. They are built for traveling. 

Michelle Thompson is traveling. She is walking from one place to another and back to the first place but not really. She does not leave the door. Michelle Thompson is traveling, trapped in a wedge with twenty ~~thousand~~ other people. She is pressed into the center of the wedge. There is no exit, and even if there were the door is spinning too quickly for her to leave, and she is pinned far too well.

She sees something in the reflection of the glass. It is in the wedge behind her. It smiles. It is hungry. She tries to say something, tries to warn the others, to tell them she needs to leave. She does not understand the words she says. They are in a language that does not and has never existed. She tries to push towards the way out. She stumbles as the door pushes faster, and she is pushed back to the center by the blurred people next to her. 

She does not understand. 

She looks at the reflection in the glass again. The figure is hungry. She does not understand the voices around her, but she does understand that. It is smiling, and it is closer than it was. It is hungry, and it wants to eat her. 

She tries to push the door faster. Perhaps that is how she can escape the endless confusing throngs of people and the face in the crowd behind that keeps getting closer. Even when she cannot see it she knows where it is, knows it’s coming closer, knows it’s smiling, knows it’s hungry. It is closer, closer than it could possibly be without breaking the glass. It is closer still. 

Michael Shelley is traveling as well. It- well. Things are complicated. Existence is not a guarantee for it. It is traveling, and it is hungry. If it can just reach one real person then Michael Shelley will be solid again, or it will be as solid as one claimed so thoroughly by the spiral ever may be. It smiles, but it does not do so out of joy. It smiles because there is no other expression that the thing that is and is not his face has ever known. Michael-Shelley-Sometimes-Michael is traveling instead. It is even more hungry. It wants to be not-real again, but that is impossible with Helen in its role and the eye watching over all. 

The door spins yet. Michelle cannot run, and Michael-Michael Shelley- Michael is gaining on her. It cannot reach her- this it knows. It is not possible. Michael knows the way to reach her, and it is a way that has been long since barred. 

“Michelle,” the creature, Michael, calls out. “Won’t you slow down? Can’t we talk?” It does not want to talk. Michelle agrees with that desire. She cannot press onwards any faster, though. She stumbles trying to keep the pace she has set. 

She had a family once. She tries to think about them, to use their memories to push her forward. She can’t remember their faces- they are as blurred as those around her. She also can not recall their voices- unintelligible static is all she can recall. Perhaps her family is trapped within the door with her. Is the green dress next to her perhaps her sibling? Is the burgundy suit behind her her mother? How sure is she that she ever had a family in the first place?

Michelle Thompson is traveling. Traveling, perhaps, is not the correct word. Traveling implies an end- not going ever inward- the Möbius strip- the ouroboros, a snake eating its tail. Perhaps moving, adventuring, trail-blazing- but none of those are quite right. Moving implies some level of purpose. Adventuring and trail-blazing imply there is new ground to be trod. Michelle, perhaps, is getting lost. It is almost surprisingly simple, getting lost when all you can do is push around in circles. It wears on you, eroding you like a river stone. 

She wonders how long until she is a static-faced nothing-person. Maybe she already is. 

Michael is traveling. It has a purpose again, something that grows in it with each futile rotation. It Knows what it is, what it is meant to do. Its connection to the Eye- that which sees all- the Ceaseless Watcher- saves it from oblivion, after all. It Knows the how and the why and the when. It can be patient, is patient. The Archivist will come, it knows. It will be Known, and that will either save it or damn it. 

The Archivist draws nearer, and Michael Knows the way. Perhaps the Spiral will not accept it back after this, but it still slips through the glass. The glass isn’t real, after all. It cannot stop Michael.

Michelle looks behind her. The creature’s smile looks different. Its eyes pierce through her. She cannot run. She cannot scream. 

Michelle Thompson is not real, and she never has been. She is a static-faced nothing-person wearing a t-shirt and jeans. 

Michelle Thompson is traveling. 

Michael is not real, either. This is the most comfortable state for it. It has been a Not for too long for anything else to fit. It feels itself shift and change into familiar non-Euclidean shapes. The Eye watches through it, and Michael welcomes this. After all, the fears all bleed into each other so beautifully, divisions of a whole. It is impossible to serve two powers at once. Michael is impossible again. 

Michael:  
And I have you to thank, Archivist. 

The Archivist:  
You killed her. 

Michael:   
Oh, Archivist. (Fondly) I freed her from this domain, and myself. I have you to thank for both of those. It was very kind of you to let me out. 

The Archivist:   
I can put you back. 

Michael:  
Oh, I don’t think so. I think that you saved me, Archivist. (Dramatically) My own knight in knitted armor! Beholding may like you, Archivist. I’m a novelty, though. It likes me, too. It won’t let you put me back in the door. 

[sound of a kiss on the cheek]

I have to go, Jonathan. There’s a whole new world to explore, and have *fun* in. Have to go- fare thee well!

[static]

The Archivist:  
It. It just glitched out of existence. I don’t know what I’m going to tell Martin if he asks. It could be worse, I suppose. I doubt it though. Michael isn’t done. I don’t know what it isn’t done with, but it isn’t done with whatever it is. 

Recording ends. Fuck.


End file.
